Dos, don’ts of wine tasting

SHARE | Monday, 26 October 2015 | By Ontametse Sugar

Some of the atendants who came to enjoy wine tasting recently hosted by Fine Brands at TownLodge

Fine Brands duo Ish and Eve Mpofu have spared their time to provide lessons in the art of wine tasting. Everyone should consider themselves as novices, when in a tasting session. Sparkling wines, they said, are normally the ones used to welcome visitors but sometimes people like calling any sparkling wine Champagne, even if it’s not. Eve said Champagne is more expensive than regular sparkling wine. She said a wine can only be Champagne if it was produced and grown from the region Champagne in France because it has to follow the rules that demand among other things fermentation in a certain way. Eve said one thing that people tend to overlook when doing wine tasting is that they will not even use the fruits in front of them or they sometimes mix the tasting of both reds and white wines when they have to start with the white ones because they are less aggressive. “What you eat before wine tasting can enhance or kill your buds. So someone needs to be careful or else they will just be drinking and they can never know the differences,” she said. She added that when doing wine tasting the 4S rule should apply which is ‘Swirling’ it first in your glass by holding the bottom of the glass, letting it ‘Settle’, then ‘Sniff’ afterward because now the aromas would have come out and after that someone can now ‘Sip’ it. She said from the 4S there is no swallow, which means that it is not supposed to be swallowed because if so someone will be wasted in their third glass and wouldn’t have tasted all the wines and the differences. She said they never encourage swallowing during their wine tastings. Eve said people should not to neglect reading the information on the bottle because sometimes they might not react well to a wine.

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Her partner, Ish Mpofu said when buying white wines it is also important for someone to take note of the life span because they have a short span of 2-3 years, but anything older than that it is always likely that they are not good anymore. “Red ones are the ones with a long life span, that is why the saying wine gets better with age,” he said. Wine should be had with food to enjoy it more, he said.